


Monster

by AgapantoBlu



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Hak Centric, Introspection, Reversed 5+1 Things I guess, canon references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:22:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five times Hak is called a monster and one time he’s not. How ironic that of all those moments of his life, the one now hunting him the most is the latter.</p><p>***</p><p>[My first Akatsuki story and it’s a mess of feelings but I’m sad and I need to vent out. I also referred to many different chapters of the story so I hope I managed to be at least slightly IC. At this point, I despair even that.]</p><p>-Hak Centric-</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

 

****

**_Monster_ **

 

 

Hak never thought much before calling any of the four dragons “Monster”, but he never did it out of malice. It was just that he was too used at being called exactly the same.

 

***

 

The first time Hak received the nickname was the day his parents passed of an illness. 

He was four and nowadays he can hardly remember anything of them, but he remembers the stink of dirt and sweat and death, and sitting in between two corpses because nobody noticed him sneaking in. He remembers how cold the skin of a dead person felt against his fingertips but he’s not sure if it was his mother’s or his father’s, he’s sure he was too busy staring at their plagued skin to look at their faces. 

He had been ill too, but he had survived. His agony had lasted less than a week, opposing to the fourteen days the disease took to kill his parents, and he had spent the days sneaking in and out their room. Nobody noticed because nobody was allowed to get in and close to the moribund.

Hak stood beside them for a very long time, frozen and silent, his face completely dry and his eyes widened. He remembers his lips broke that die, because he kept them half open the whole time and breathing through his mouth without remembering to drink had dried them to bleeding.

The only face he remembers even today is the one of the healer of the village, an old lady dressed soberly and with a big hunched nose in between two sharp little eyes. Hak had never liked her, even before, and the feeling was mutual. She would never miss a chance to throw something at him when he and his friends hung out too close to her house and even in that moment her only reaction, when she came into the improvised cabin for the ill, was to sigh heavily.

“Come on,” she ordered gruffly as she approached him and grabbed his arm to pull him on his feet, “I’ll have to find someone to impose you to, now that-”

Hak never let her finish the sentence. He turned and bit into her wrist as deep as he could and when her scream filled the stagnating air he wriggled free of her hold and ran out as fast as he could.

He was young and didn’t make it far before her angry shriek reached his ears.

“You bloody  _monster_!”

He almost stumbled in his own feet. Luckily, he had fallen enough times already to be able to regain his balance and to avoid a man trying to grab him, then he sprinted toward the forest. Only when he passed the first trees he allowed himself to replay that word in his head.

He had never been called that before. From what he knew, a monster was one of those evil creatures in his mother’s stories, that came out at night and were killed by the good heroes. Was he going to get killed too?, was he evil?

He brushed a arm on his eyes when he felt them water, but it couldn’t stop the tears from pooling.

When he opened his mouth to call for his parents and realized he was not going to receive an answer,  _never again_ , he stopped trying not cry.

 

 

> (The man who found him wasn’t from his village. Hak knew because he if he were, the kid would have surely pranked him and that stupid white beard of his before.
> 
> He was not exactly given a choice, since it was either the weird man or the old hag, so he went with him and found out that Fuuga wasn’t really that much different from his hometown, just bigger.)

***

 

The second time he was called that, he was ten and had taken a real spear in his hands for the first time. 

It was different from using one of the fake wooden ones Mundok had only ever let him touch before — _It’s too dangerous!_ , he’d say.  _You’re still a brat, brat!_ , like it would make any sense —, but not too much so. Hak needed less than an hour to learn how to adjust his grip and strength to fit the heavier weapon, accommodating himself to the new weight and compensating where he could.

 _I’ll need more time to train_ , he thought within himself as he slashed the air in front of him, almost an inch too much to his left than how he wanted too. He highly doubted Mundok would be happy about his request, he complained about them not spending enough “bonding time” together already as it was, so Hak guessed he’d have to skip something and hide to practice — as if he had never done it before —.

He rotated on himself before trying with a lunge and finding out that widening the space between his hands on the rod really managed to restore the balance that the heavy blade on top had made him lose. He grinned, proud of the accomplishment, and decided to twirl the blade above his head, looking for more familiarity with the new texture of metal, and when he hastily returned to a guarded position the weapon cut through the air with a whistling sound.

He stopped when he saw a group of people, foreigners judging by their clothes and merchants judging by the sacks on their backs, staring at him from the other side of the little open space where he was training. For a moment he thought they might want to ask indications, but he rapidly dismissed the thought: they were on the main road and literally not even fifty steps from the stairs to the entrance doors of Fuuga, only an idiot would get lost there.

He cocked his head to a side, but before he could speak he saw one the man hastily pushing the woman to his side further on the path.

“Don’t stare at him,” he ordered in a low voice, but not low enough for Hak not to ear him anyway.

“Scary,” the woman answered, not even as careful as her husband as she looked at ground with her eyes widened. “Do people here train their children so young?!”

“It’s a tradition of the Wind Tribe, I heard, but still that blade is terrifying in the hands of such a little creature,” added an old man just behind them, poorly hiding how he was spying on the kid from the corner of his eyes even as they moved to leave. “Believe me, someone who tastes violence so early cannot become anything but a monster.”

Hak let them leave, standing still in the middle of the space, and only when the echo of their steps got lost he lifted the spear again and resumed training.

 

 

 

> (Mundok yelled at him from missing dinner when he came back, spitting nonsense about growing big and healty, but Hak ignored him and hastily hid in his room.
> 
> Han-Dae and Tae-Woo somehow managed to sneak in anyway and brought food in exchange of his training secrets or whatever. Hak took the fruit and made up some things about the spear, letting the bright eyes of the other two kids wash away the memory of some hours before.)

 

***

 

The third time, it was like a kick to his stomach and a rain of others all over him.

He was sixteen and Hiryuu Castle held the most important entertainment event of the year, the Martial Arts Tournament. He had made it to the finals relatively easily, exploiting the way his adversaries underestimated him in the first five rounds and then taking advantage of his little frame to gain speed and agility over his assailants. When he got to the last match, he had only few minor injuries — that Mundok would definitely fuss about later, he could almost already hear him, that old man — and was biting his lip pensively.

The other finalist, General Lee Geun-Tae of the Earth Tribe, had just finished his semifinal match against General Han Joo-Doh of the Sky Tribe, an amazing warrior who definitely put up a fight and managed to injure his opponent’s right hand quite severely before going down once and for all.

Hak had seen it, Hak now knew of his opponent’s most prominent weakness. Hak lifted his right sleeve and stared at his armpit, in the Wind Tribe’s tent before his match.

He laid the blade on the sweaty and bruised flesh, wondering how deep he should cut to make things even with the other warrior, but he stopped shortly before doing any actual damage.

Mundok, Yona and Soo-Won wouldn’t let him live it down if he hurt himself, would they? What a pain., he huffed in his mind. Whatever, he could just limit himself to use his left hand and that would make the fight even, right? He bet nobody would notice, anyway.

What went wrong with his proposition, were the whispers from the crowd.

“How can it be possible?!”

“Lord Geun-Tae, be careful!”

“ _What_  even is that kid?!”

“A monster! That’s a monster!”

The word ringing in his head made him lose his focus for a second, but for a veteran like the Earth Tribe General that was more than enough. Hak barely escaped the next hit and his body reacted on its own, following years of exhausting training.

The moment he used his right arm, he knew he had won and he felt like punching himself.

Lord Geun-Tae fell down and someone proclaimed the victor “The Wind Tribe’s Son Hak” in a powerful echoing voice but the murmurs of the spectators were louder in his mind.

“No way.”

“Our lord Geun-Tae lost…?!”

“Who is that kid…”

_A monster._

Hak’s eyes fell on the man and saw him smirking. “You’re definitely from Mundok’s place. You were just like a beast made out of lightening.”

_Beast. Just like a beast. You. Beast._

“Hey, hey, you beat this Geun Tae, you know?” He didn’t notice his opponent had gotten up ‘till when the man was already patting his head, as if he was a kid. “Why don’t you get excited like a normal kid?”

_Not normal._

He grabbed the General, without thinking, pulling him closer to his face. Nobody would listen to him, because he’s not normal, he’s a beast and a monster, but Geun-Tae didn’t look intimidated at all and people would listen to him for sure.

“This match,” he spoke clearly, keeping the blankest face he could. “Please, invalidate it.” The General widened his eyes and Hak strived to ignore the buzzing voices behind him. “You…” Was he being disrespectful? Mundok always told him he was a disaster, socially speaking — and that was totally unrelated about all times he called the King an “ _happy-go-lucky king_ ” — “During your last match versus General Joo-Doh you hurt your arm badly, didn’t you?”

He couldn’t understand the Earth Tribe’s Chief surprise, the wonder in the way he spoke about him using his left hand, especially considering he had failed at his own purpose.

“Like I thought,-” he muttered to himself, “-I should have wounded my right hand before the match.”

He didn’t exactly expected to have rough knuckles rubbed against his temple.

“That hurts, old man!” Maybe Mundok was right, he really was a social disaster.

“What’s up with this kid, how interesting! General Mundok, give this kid to me!”

“NO WAY!”

Hak watched General Geun-Tae leaving the ring denying any possible wound, but couldn’t shake off his words even when Soo-Won reached him to congratulate for the victory.

“It’s great, Hak! The Earth Tribe’s General is one of the strongest in the whole kingdom! You beat him and he even gave you a name, it’s an honor!”

That actually shook him from his thoughts. “A name?”

Soo-Won’s face was, as always, bright like the sun, his eyes big and his fisted hands raised in a stubborn pose as he nodded fervently.

“Everybody heard what he said, they’re starting to call you Thunder Beast already!”

_Beast._

Hak let it hurt a moment more, his eyes leaving his friend to scan the crows and he stopped when he saw his own tribe, the people over-enthusiastically celebrating and Han-Dae hugging the life out of Tae-Woo, then finally he let it go, out of his mind.

He decided the ‘beast’ was always better than ‘monster’ anyway.

 

 

 

> (From time to time, Lord Geun-Tae popped out of nowhere to try to convince the Wind Tribe’s General to give him the kid. 
> 
> Hak would never admit it out loud, but he felt somehow lighter every time Mundok yelled at him that he would never trade his grandson.)

 

***

 

The fourth time was different. It stung, but faded fast and was rapidly gone like floating wind.

Hak blamed those stupid four dragons for his progressively bigger lack of judgement. He used to be smarter and had more dignity, when it was just him and the princess, and he wasn’t sure if getting some company and accomplishing some old legend was worth reaching the point where he could hide his face with a stupid ball of fur and face a bunch of soldiers bare handed.

“What is that?! A monster?!”

The word stung, but only because it always did. It was like a conditioned reflex, but he easily suppressed it with a glance at the little girl the Fire Tribe soldiers had tried to collect as tax payment in Yoon’s village. It was not worth believing in the words of such lowlives.

By the time they were done with the soldiers, Hak’s new name was  _The Dark Dragon_  and he was striving not to slam his forehead against the first tree. At least the  _Thunder Beast_  wasn’t accompanied by an  _Happy Hungry Bunch_! 

He really had no dignity left.

Still, he never complained vocally against the name. The dragons never complained against him calling them ‘monsters’ after all, so in a way he thought that was fair. He felt kind of bad every time he used that word, but he soon found out it was hard not to, as if it hid under the surface of his most mundane thoughts waiting to jump out at the right occasion.

He hoped he was for them like Yona was for him: someone whose even harshest words didn’t hurt that much.

 

 

 

> (Dragon was by far the greatest kind of animalistic name he had ever been given anyway, and the bunch of happy hungry idiots with him surely could be embarrassing at times, but it also felt just like Shin-ah’s fur.
> 
> It was soft and warm.)

 

***

 

The fifth time was a come-back to earth.

It was also the time Hak realized it was not the word per se, because the people around them whispering it were a lot, soldiers from all factions, but what made him freeze and shoved all the memories from the past on him like a bucket of freezing cold water was Joo-Doh.

Hak had seen him drawing his twin swords more than once in his life, but never before agains him, nor with that expression of pained fury.

Lord Geun-Tae had tried to mediate, but it was easy to see that he wouldn’t be listened too. And then…

“ _YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TERRIFYING THE THUNDER BEAST CAN BE!_ ”

 _Here it is._  So he was not even a person anymore?, he was just the beast everybody had always thought?

Hak took in at the same time Mundok’s sad shock — as if he knew what those words meant, as if he could read his grandson’s mind — and Shin-ah’s and Yoon’s confusion — like they couldn’t believe someone could think such of him, like it was impossible for them to see Hak as anything but an overprotective grumpy big brother —.

“ _HE WILL EVENTUALLY THREATEN HIS MAJESTY’S LIFE! WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING BEFORE THAT HAPPENS!_ ”

Ki-ja looked like a lost kid, eyes wide and slightly open lips — and that was amazing, after Hak called him white snake so many times and after all their banters —, but Jea-ah was serious, his brows furrowed, and his stance was stiff and guarded — because he knew, he had been under that same fire, and he was the one who understood Hak the best, as always —.

“ _WE HAVE TO KILL HIM!_ ”

Hak didn’t see anything more. He only saw Joo-Doh’s eyes, crazy and almost hallucinating, and he could understand, weirdly enough.

Soo-Won had that power over people. He brought them to the point they’d do anything, no matter how painful, just to help him, just to see him accomplish whatever he desired, just to get a tiny bit closer, like they couldn’t breath without him. He was not cruel, but he could very well be with how strong the need to please and follow him he inspired in people was. Hak knew something about it.

During the whole ordeal, Hak’s face stood cold and strong, an impenetrable wall he had built up time after time he had been treated like an inhuman being, but inside he was thinking. And he realized that it wasn’t the word that stung. It was  _just a word_ , after all. It was the mixture of fear and hatred that it held, the terror turning into a desperate need to get rid of the threat; that hurt.

Hak heard Soo-Won talking, but all he took out of that voice while his mind raced searching for his glaive was: “Have you not noticed it? The bloodlust directed toward you.”

The Wind Tribe’s weapons were held high, daring. The dragons had shifted, Jea-ah and Ki-ja now standing  _in front_  of him with stern gazes and ready to fight, and even Yoon was glaring threateningly in a way that would make Hak laugh in any other situation.

Joo-Doh saw the same things, but one more and Yona’s expression was filled with a guiltless disappointment that made the General turn his face away. Hak was watching him retreat when a gentle tug to the back of his tunic opened a surprised expression on his face, and when he turned he saw his childish pain on the princess’ face. 

 _Ah_ , he thought. He would never be able to let Yona hurt, would he?

So all he said was: “It’s okay.”

 

 

 

> (It really is, when he hugged Zeno and when Jea-ah acted weirdly again and when they all slept together again and when Yona said “I want to touch you”. 
> 
> It was especially  _okay_  when he hugged her.)

 

***

 

One day Soo-Won had told him something that Hak would never forget.

 _“You’re my goal,”_  he had said, with his blond hair grazing his shoulders and big child eyes too serious for the age they were. He had just moved the whole city with a flicker of his wrist to find Yona, yet he looked at Hak in wonder and maybe a bit of frustration, but of a benign kind, wasting nonsensical words of praise on a rascal like his friend.

Hak’s thoughts back then had been simple and naïve, just like him. A mixture of pride and embarrassment and a lot of excitement and a new resolution in getting better, better,  _the best_ , to the point he could become someone worth of Soo-Won’s admiration. Someone big enough that once they’d stand on even ground, like  _equals_ , it would be on top of the world as Soo-Won deserved.

 _“Someone like him-”_  he had thought,  _“-is looking at me.”_

Hak still dreams about that day, sometimes, and he wakes up in cold sweat.

 

 

 

> (As a child, he used to think he couldn’t be that bad if someone like Soo-Won looked up to him.
> 
> Now, he realizes they’re just both monsters.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am sad on my own. I have a lot of Hak/Soo-Won friendship feelings; I have a lot of Hak feelings, period. And I’m angry at Joo-Doh. I admire his loyalty to Soo-Won, but I can’t forget the things he said and how ready he was to just kill Hak without second thought.
> 
> So you get this thing and suffer with me. I wasn’t even sure if posting this was alright since I’m not completely satisfied, but I added the last paragraph today and it gave me a better feeling and here we are.
> 
> Hak deserved so much better and one day I’ll write an AU in which Il died of an illness and Soo-Won married Yona just for political reasons and she realized she was in love with Hak and they all lived happily ever after with Soo-Won blessing his friends affair and Hak blessing his friends marriage and Yona being blessed with those two guys getting along and accomplishing everything they set their mind to. Fuck characters’ development, I just want them to be happy.


End file.
